The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  The Princes of the Ottoman nation (the first nation in the world in the fortunes of war) have enthusiastically embraced this opinion. Bajazet II and his son who departed from it and spent their time on erudition and other indoor occupations dealt severe blows to their Empire. And the one who reigns at present, Amurath III, by following their examples has made a good start at proving the same. Was it not Edward III, King of England, who made this quip about our Charles V: ‘Never was there king who less donned his armour. Yet never was there king who gave me more trouble!’ And he was right to find that strange, being the result of luck rather than of reason.3 And let those seek supporters other than me who want to number the Kings of Castile and Portugal among the great-souled conquerors in war because, at twelve hundred leagues from their idle dwellings, they made themselves masters (risking the skin of their factors) of both the Indies; we still do not know whether they would simply have had courage enough to go and take possession of them in person.

  [A] The Emperor Julian went further: a philosopher and a gallant man should not pause for breath – meaning that they ought to concede nothing to their bodily necessities except what could not be denied them, since they are ever keeping both body and soul occupied in great and beautiful deeds of virtue. He was ashamed to be seen even spitting or sweating in public (as has also been said of the youth of Sparta, and by Xenophon of the youth of Persia) because he reckoned that exercise, continuous toil and sober living ought to have burnt dry all such excess fluids. What Seneca said would not fit badly here: the Ancient Romans kept their youth on their toes, teaching their boys nothing which had to be learned sitting down.4

  [C] It is a noble desire that even one’s death should be manly and useful: but that action lies not in our sound resolve but in our good fortune. Hundreds who have intended to win, or to die fighting, have failed at both, wounds or prisons blocking this design by granting them a compulsory existence. There are maladies which strike to the ground our wishes and our consciousness.

  [’95] Fortune did not feel obliged to favour the vanity of the Roman legions who bound themselves by oath to vanquish or to die: ‘Victor, Marce Fabi, revertar ex acie: si fallo, Jovem Patrem Gradivumque Martem aliosque iratos invoco Deos.’ [I shall, O Marcus Fabius, return victorious from the line of battle. If I fail, I invoke the anger of Father Jove, of Marching Mars and the other gods.] The Portuguese tell how in one place during their conquest of the Indies they confronted warriors who had doomed themselves with horrifying oaths to accept no terms other than death or victory; as a sign of that vow they had cropped their heads and shaved off their beards.5

  It is no use stubborning it out and taking risks: it seems that blows avoid those who gaily expose themselves to them and never willingly land on those who too willingly face them and thus spoil their intention.

  Many a man, unable to manage to get killed by the might of the enemy, despite assaying every way to keep his vow to return with victory or not at all, has been constrained to kill himself in the very heat of battle. There are other examples, but here is one: Philistus, the commander of the navy of the younger Dionysius against the men of Syracuse, engaged the enemy, the battle being bitterly contested since their forces were equal. He got the upper hand at first because of his daring; but the Syracusans took up position round his galley and besieged it: he personally did many gallant deeds-of-arms in an attempt to break through, then, despairing of any other solution, took his own life which he had so freely – and so unsuccessfully – exposed to the hands of his enemies.6

  [C] Muley Moloch, the King of Fez who has just beaten Sebastian, King of Portugal, on that famous day which saw the death of three kings and the transfer of that mighty crown to the crown of Castile, was already gravely ill when the Portuguese invaded his territory. Thereafter he daily declined nearer and nearer to a death which he clearly foresaw. Never did a man exert himself more energetically nor with greater glory. He realized he was too weak to stand the ceremonial entry into his camp – an entry which is traditionally full of magnificence and chock-full of action – so he surrendered that honour to his brother. But it was also the only duty of a Commander that he did give up: all the other duties, the necessary and the useful ones, he carried out most rigorously and most punctiliously; he allowed his body to lie down but he kept his mind on its toes and his heart firm until he drew his last breath – indeed a little beyond. He would have been able to sap the strength of his enemies who had imprudently thrust deep into his lands, so it grieved him terribly that, for lack of a little more life and also for the lack of anyone who could take his place in waging that war and guiding his troubled kingdom, he had to go in search of a hazardous bloody victory when a clear and certain one was within his grasp. However he made a wonderful use of his remaining time: he led the enemy to exhaust himself by drawing them far from their navy and the maritime fortresses which they had established on the African coast; that he did until his last day of life which he had kept as a reserve force to cast into that battle. Deploying his troops in a ring he invested the Portuguese army on all sides, closing the circle and squeezing them tight; the fighting was very bitter because of the valour of the young king of the invaders, but the enemy were hampered by having to face attacks from all directions and were unable to flee after they were routed; they were therefore constrained to charge into their own ranks (‘coarcervanturque non solum cæde, sed etiam fuga’) [the dead lay in heaps not only from the slaughter but from the retreat], men, pile upon pile, furnishing the victors with a total and murderous victory. As he was dying he was carried about from place to place wherever need called him; passing through the ranks he exhorted his officers and men one after another. But when the enemy broke through his troops in one sector he could not be dissuaded from mounting his saddle, sword in hand. He strove to join the affray; his men stopped him by clinging to his bridle, to his clothes and his stirrups; but the effort finally overwhelmed what little life he had left. He was laid down again. When all his other faculties were failing he started out of his swoon to warn that his death must be kept quiet – which was indeed the most necessary order which he still had to give – so that news of it should not arouse despair among his troops; he then died, holding his finger to his sealed lips (the common gesture meaning, Keep quiet).7

  What man has ever lived so far and so deep into his own death? What man ever died more on his feet!

  The ultimate degree of treating death courageously, and the most natural one, is to face it not only without amazement but without worry, extending the ordinary course of your life right into death. As Cato did, who spent his time in sleep and study while keeping present in his head and heart that violent bloody death and holding it in his palm.8

  22. On riding ‘in post’

  [From the early sixteenth century, generals and statesmen ‘laid posts’ (at first temporary ones but later permanent ones) along ‘post-routes’. At each post-stage horses were kept and it was the duty of the post-master or courier to ride at all speed to the next post with the dispatches (or ‘post’). ‘To ride in post’ meant to ride literally as such a postman or else at express speed as a sport, normally in relay-races. It was this sport which Montaigne used to be good at. The military, political and financial advantages of rapid communication also led to the reintroduction of carrier-pigeons into Europe: Rabelais used this fact in his Sciomachie of 1549 to explain otherwise miraculously rapid spreadings of news, especially between bankers. By Montaigne’s time they were more usual but still a source of curiosity.]

  [B] I have not been one of the weakest at this sport, which is suited to men of my stocky short build; but I am: giving up such business: it makes too great an assay of our strength to keep it up for long.

  [A] I was reading just now that King Cyrus, in order to facilitate the reception of news from all parts of his very wide Empire, found out how far horses could get in a day at one stretch, and then at such distances stationed men with responsibility for holding horses in readiness to furnish
to those who were travelling to see him.1 [C] Some maintain that the speed of such journeys is that of cranes in flight.

  [A] Caesar said that when Lucius Vibulus Rufus was hurrying to bring a warning to Pompey, he remained night and day on the road, changing horses so as to travel more swiftly. And according to Suetonius, Caesar himself covered a hundred miles a day in a hired chariot. But he was a mad courier! For whenever rivers cut across his road he swam across them, [C] turning off neither left nor right to search for a bridge or a ford. [A] When Tiberius Nero went to see his brother Drusus who was ill in Germany, he covered two hundred miles in twenty-four hours in three chariots.

  [C] Livy says that during the war which the Romans fought against King Antiochus, Titus Sempronius Gracchus ‘per dispositos equos prope incredibili celeritate ab Amphissa tertio die Pellam pervenit’ [using relays of horses travelled on the third day with almost unbelievable speed from Amphissa to Pella]. And if you look at the context it is clear that it refers to permanent posts, not ones newly established for that ride.2

  [B] Even faster was Caecinus’ new way of sending news to those at home: he took swallows with him which he released to fly back to their nests whenever he wished to send his news home, staining them with the coloured mark appropriate to his message according to a code which he had agreed on with his family.

  In the Roman theatres the paterfamilias kept pigeons in the breast of his toga and attached messages to them whenever he wished to ask those at home to do something for him; they were moreover trained to bring back the answers. Decimus Brutus made use of them when under siege at Mutina; others have done so elsewhere.3

  In Peru the couriers rode on men who bore them in litters on their shoulders with such agility that the first porters relayed their burden to the next team at the run without missing a step.4

  [C] I have been given to understand that the Wallachians, the couriers of the Grand Seigneur, make the fastest speeds of all, since they have the right to force anyone whom they meet travelling on their road to dismount and to exchange his horse for their exhausted one, and also because they wear a tight broad band round their waists to stop them from tiring,5 [95] as quite a few others do. I have found no relief in this method.

  23. On bad means to a good end

  [Reflections on the health and sickness of States, mainly arising from reading Jean Bodin.]

  [A] Throughout the whole system governing the works of Nature there can be found an amazing analogy and correspondence which shows that it is neither fortuitous nor controlled by a variety of Masters. The maladies and the characteristics of our bodies can also be found in States and polities; like us, kingdoms and republics are born, flourish and fade into decrepitude. We are subject to a surfeit of humours which serves no purpose and is harmful. The humours themselves may be good (and the doctors fear them particularly: they say that since nothing within us remains stable, health when perfect can be too positive and vigorous and should be tamed and diminished by the Art of medicine for fear that our nature, being unable to remain fixed in any one place yet having no possibility of further improvement, should suddenly collapse in disorder: that is why they prescribe for athletes purgations and bleedings so as to draw off that superabundance of health); the humours may be also bad, which is the usual cause of illness.

  Ailing political systems may often show a similar surfeit, and various sorts of purges are normally used for it. Sometimes, to take the load off the country, a great multitude of families are given leave to seek better conditions elsewhere, to some other nation’s detriment. It was in this way that our ancient Franks left the depths of Germany and came and took over Gaul, driving out the original inhabitants. Thus too were formed those huge waves of humanity which poured into Italy under Brennus and others; so too the Goths and the Vandals, like the peoples who at present hold Greece, abandoned their native lands to settle more spaciously elsewhere. There are scarcely two or three corners in the world which have not experienced such migrations.

  That was the way the Romans built their colonies: when they thought that their City was becoming excessively big they relieved it of the people they needed least, sending them off to inhabit and farm the lands which they had conquered. And sometimes they deliberately kept up wars with some of their enemies, not only to keep their men in training, fearing that idleness the Mother of decadence might bring some worse trouble upon them –

  [B] Et patimur longæ pacis mala; sævior armis,

  Luxuria incumbit

  [We are suffering the ills of a prolonged peace: luxury, more savage than war, is crushing us]1

  – [A] but also to serve as a good phlebotomy for the Republic and to ventilate a little of the excessively mind-stirring heat of their young men, pruning and pollarding the branches of a stock growing rampant from too much energy. They sometimes used their war against the Carthaginians for this purpose.

  King Edward III of England would not include in the general peace established with our French King at the Treaty of Bretigny their quarrel over the Duchy of Brittany: he wanted somewhere to unload his fighting-men and to dissuade the multitude of Englishmen who had served him across the Channel from pouring back into England.

  One of the reasons why King Philip agreed to dispatch his son Jean to the wars in Outremer was that he could take with him a large number of the hot-blooded young men to be found in his army.

  There are many today who use similar arguments, wishing that the heat of the civil commotions among us could be diverted into some war against our neighbours, fearing that those aberrant humours which now dominate the body politic would, if not decanted elsewhere, continue to maintain our troubles at fever-pitch, finally entailing our complete collapse. And indeed a foreign war is a distemper much less harsh than a civil war: but I do not believe that God would look favourably on so wicked an enterprise as our attacking and quarrelling with a neighbour simply for our own convenience.

  [B] Nil mihi tam valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo,

  Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris.

  [O Nemesis, ye Rhamnusian Virgin, grant that I may desire nothing so much that I should wrench it from its rightful owner.]2

  [A] Yet so wretched is our condition that we are often driven to the necessity of using evil means to a good end. Lycurgus, the most virtuous and perfect lawgiver there ever was, introduced a most iniquitous way of training his Spartan citizens in temperance: he compelled their slaves the Helots to get drunk so that the Spartans should see them lost and wallowing in their wine and so hold the excesses of that vice in horror.3

  Even more wrong were those who in Ancient times permitted that criminals who had been condemned to any kind of death might be cut up alive by doctors so as to reveal our inner organs in their natural state and so establish greater certainty in their Art; for if we really must indulge in depravity, we are more to be excused if we do so for the good of the soul than for the good of the body: as did the Romans who trained their citizens in valour and in contempt for death and danger by those frenzied spectacles of gladiators and swordsmen who fought to the death, hacking at each other and killing each other while they looked on:

  [B] Quid vesani aliud sibi vult ars impia ludi,

  Quid mortes juvenum, quid sanguine pasta voluptas?

  [For what else can be meant by those mindless impious shows, by those slaughterings of young men and that pleasure fed on blood?]

  Such slaughter lasted until the time of the Emperor Theodosius:

  Arripe dilatam tua, dux, in tempora famam,

  Quodque patris superest, successor laudis habeto.

  Nullus in urbe codat cujus sit pæna voluptas.

  Jam solis contenta feris, infamis arena

  Nulla cruentatis homicidia ludat in armis.

  [O thou, our Leader, succeed to your father’s glory and grasp such honour as he set aside for our times… Let no man be any longer killed in Rome to provide entertainment… Let the infamous arena be content with wild beasts alone and no more make a sport of mu
rder wrought with blood-stained weapons.]

  [A] It was indeed a wonderful and very fruitful example for training the people that they should have every day before their eyes a hundred, two hundred or even a thousand pairs of men bearing arms, hacking each other to pieces with such extreme strength of courage that never was heard a single word of weakness or of pity, never a back was turned, never was an opponent’s blow cowardly dodged even but rather were necks offered to swords and presented to blows. Several of them who were mortally covered with many a wound, before lying down to die in the arena sent messages to the spectators to inquire whether they were pleased with their service. It was not enough that they should fight and die with constancy: they had to do it cheerfully: with the result that if they were seen to be reluctant to die there was booing and cursing.

  [B] The very maidens egged them on.

  Consurgit ad ictus;

  Et, quoties victor femm jugulo inscrit, illa

  Delitias ait esse suas, pectusque jacentis

  Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi.